Naim Atom ARC

In theory it supports ARC from any manufacturer, in reality ARC and HDMI CEC control are flakey at best regardless of manufacturer or device. It may work sometime, all the time or not at all. Until you try it you really won't know. My brother had lg TV and sound bar ARC never worked properly. So he switche to optical. 

The HDMI ARC functionality between my Uniti Star and Samsung TV was initially very hit and miss, but successive firmware updates to both has resulted in much improved functionality. 

HDMI works pretty well for me between Samsung TV and Atom, although there were issues with it until a recent Naim firmware update. It seems that reliability issues with HDMI ARC are quite common, so the only sure way to find out is to try it for yourself. 

The Atom, by design, will only start playing through its HDMI input if you have switched it on in the Naim app. 

I have not been able to use the Atom HDMI upgrade board with either of my 2 Sony TV’s or a Samsung.

I took one of the Sony TV’s and my Atom to my dealers for them to resolve but they also could not get it to work. In the end I got a refund for the HDMI upgrade and now just just the optical output from th TV’s to play sound through my Atom based system.

cycleallday posted:

I have not been able to use the Atom HDMI upgrade board with either of my 2 Sony TV’s or a Samsung.

I took one of the Sony TV’s and my Atom to my dealers for them to resolve but they also could not get it to work. In the end I got a refund for the HDMI upgrade and now just just the optical output from th TV’s to play sound through my Atom based system.

Was this before the recent firmware update - that fixed HDMI problems for me. 

It was before the firmware update and i have not tried it since applying the update. 

At present i am happy just using the optical connection as the only impact is the need to use two remotes when setting sound output and that is not really a problem.

I thought the update was just to overcome dropouts  and my HDMI output would play nothing from either of my 3 TV’s. The board is fine as it played the shops TV (odd make and not one of the major brands found on the high street). My tv hdmi outputs are fine as they all play a sound bar with no problem.

I have just purchased the Atom with HDMI and can confirm it works with my Sony Sony 49XE800A ARC output. The only frustrating bit to be honest is the very very slow android operation of TV can take 1 or 2 minutes for it to decide how and where to send the Audio !

Once connected the Atom switches on and volume is controllable via Single TV remote 

Any suggestions re the HDMI cable and will it effect sound quality etc ?

David Weller posted:

Any suggestions re the HDMI cable and will it effect sound quality etc ?

Mine is a basic 1.4 version that cost £1.60 and appears to work fine. TV sound quality is not a huge priority for us, so I have no idea if a better cable would improve it. No doubt someone will try this sooner or later!

You could try some of the WireWorld HDMI cables. Relatively inexpensive and offer some decent improvement in terms of audio and video quality.